EVERY INCH A LADY

A fashion show manager describes her kaleidoscopic career.

Former model Smaltz begins her memoir in grand style. “To my dearest and truly fabulous friends,” she writes, adding that readers “are about to travel through the intimate halls of my life—those spicy, profound secrets I have kept close to my heart.” She describes how “a Black woman from the vibrant heart of Harlem” became “enmeshed in the luxurious folds of haute couture and high fashion.” Born in 1937, she grew up modestly well off in Harlem before beginning her modeling career, which started with a gig as part of Willie Mays’ Say Hey Kid campaign. She then had various stints: model and sales coordinator for Lane Bryant, Ebony fashion editor, columnist for Vogue, and ultimately founder of Ground Crew (TGC), a management company that ran fashion shows for such designers as Donna Karan, Oscar de la Renta, and more. Smaltz also chronicles her love life, from a one-night stand with Isaac Hayes to her longtime relationship with Lionel Hampton and her marriage to former basketball star Gail Marquis. Much of the prose in this adjective-heavy memoir is breathless (but often amusing); she notes, for instance, that paramour Walt Bellamy of the New York Knicks was “225 pounds of pure chocolate sexiness,” adding, “He had stamina!” Amid all the fabulousness, however, is a sober portrait of her era’s racism, from the difficulty Black women had in finding pantyhose that matched their skin to the Bloomingdale’s executive who almost didn’t hire her as a second Black staff member because “the presence of a single token Black employee seemed to be her threshold for diversity.” And she dispenses useful advice applicable to any discipline, as when she encourages readers to find “that sweet spot where passion and duty merge, turning every task into a labor of love, a joy rather than a chore.”

An effusive but revealing look at a fashion pioneer.